Songs of War 1914-1918
WW I Poetry into Music
Saturday, April 25, 2009 at 7:30 p.m.
St. James’s Church Piccadilly
Nicolas Mulroy, tenor
William Coleman, baritone
Anna Tilbrook, piano
Poets
A E Housman
Thomas Hardy
Rupert Brooke
W W Gibson
Edward Thomas
Robert Graves
F W Harvey
John McCrae
Edmund Blunden
Siegfried Sassoon
Ivor Gurney
Wilfred Owen
Composers
Ivor Gurney
George Butterworth
John Ireland
Cyril Rootham
Gerald Finzi
Edward E Thomas
Benjamin Britten
John Jeffreys
Elaine Hugh-Jones
Ian Venables
Alan Bullard
“My subject is war and the pity of war. The poetry is in the pity
.”
-Wilfred Owen
I NTRODUCTION
Like Wilfred Owen, poets of his generation who went to battle recorded their firsthand witness to the horrors of war. Others wrote from a romantic view about the excitement and intoxication of going off to glorious victory. And finally, there were those poems written later reflecting and combining the two extremes above, long after the battles had ceased to roar.
The moods and diversity in these war poems must have cried out to be set to music.
Just over half of the songs presented during the evening were written by musicians who were contemporaries of the poets. They include, in chronological order of birth:
Cyril Rootham (2 songs), John Ireland (3 songs), George Butterworth (6 songs), Ivor
Gurney (2 songs and 5 poems!) and Gerald Finzi (2 songs).

Immediately following this generation of poets are composers Benjamin Britten (one song) and Edward Eastway Thomas (one song).
But subsequent generations of composers read and continued to feel moved to write powerful songs to these poems. The relevancy of these poems is still inspiring composers today. We heard songs produced by four living composers including
Elaine Hugh-Jones (7 songs), John Jeffreys (2 songs), Ian Venables (2 songs) and
Alan Bullard (one song commissioned especially for this concert by the family of the poet Edmund Blunden.
The resonance of this poetry continues to connect with us as we watch daily accounts of war on the news. The strife over ideologies and the battles that result, recur on some part of the earth every moment. Sadly, it is not the politicians and “arm chair” generals who sacrifice their lives for these causes.
B
ACKGROUND AND
R
EALIZATION OF THE
C
ONCERT
“The seed that was planted and grew” became a long-term project of Sam Gray, the organizer of this evening’s concert who gives the credit for its beginnings to composer Elaine Hugh-Jones. She wrote a letter telling him about her set of songs entitled “Songs of War” (poems by Wilfred Owen). Sam heard the songs performed on a concert in June of 2007, ( honouring the composer’s 80 th birthday). From that time on, the idea of creating a collaborative concert event that would include other important poets of this time and the music inspired by them led him to devote almost two years of research. This included tracing 90 years of English song literature that would fit such an occasion.
The following literary organizations collaborating on this concert included Wilfred
Owen Association (Sam Gray), Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship (Phil Carne), War Poets
Association (David Worthington), Edmund Blunden Fellowship (Jonathan Burton),
Ivor Gurney Society (Ian Venables), The Housman Society (Jim Page) and Edward
Thomas Fellowship (Colin Thornton).
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Once the venue of St. James’s Church was found and a date secured, a tenor, baritone and pianist were engaged. When it was discovered that one of the greatest poems of
Edmund Blunden, “A Swan, A Man” had no music, the poet’s family commissioned the composer Alan Bullard to write a song to these beautiful words.
Among the distinguished guests of the evening were several relatives of the poets including Margi, the daughter of Edmund Blunden, and three of her sisters. In her introductory welcoming address to the audience, Margi gave a touching tribute to her father. Others who were present include the granddaughter of W W Gibson, and a nephew of Wilfred Owen (Peter), a son of Wilfred’s youngest brother, Colin.
In addition to the above, one of the other privileges was having two of the four living composers present in the audience. They were Alan Bullard and Elaine Hugh-Jones.
Most unfortunately, the third composer, Ian Venables, was unable to attend but he later gave many helpful notes concerning his songs and his involvement with the
Gurney Society. Also absent was John Jeffreys whose enormous song output (over
100 songs) has been a great contribution to English song literature.
Announcement of this event was featured on BBC Radio 3 on April 24 th
, the day before the concert, by host Sean Rafferty. He interviewed Sam Gray and the two singers and pianist who performed a few of the songs from the program.
T HE C OMPOSERS AND THEIR MUSIC
As mentioned above there were a total of 31 poems set by 11 composers from several generations over a span of 90 years. It seems there are three distinctive points of view in these war poems. They could be categorized under the following titles:
1.
Romantic view of war; including heroism, martyrs and other pageantry connected to nationalism
2.
Horrors of living the actual war experience
3.
The aftermath of reflected guilt and delayed grief.
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These three vantage points for classification may overlap in any one poem. Most musical settings are faithful to the poetic forms and the composer will rarely change the text. Sometimes there are slight changes to adapt to a musical balance of phrase or melodic line.
1. Romanticism
A few examples of the romantic view of war that were particularly memorable we found in the beloved and more familiar settings of A E Housman’s “Six Songs from a
Shropshire Lad.” This collection begins with a dreamy melodic and gentle song of a cherry tree in bloom and ends with a most heart breaking ballad, “Is my team ploughing.” Another song in the robust but ironic black comedy vein was Gurney’s musical setting of “The Mugger’s Song” (1920). It has a bitter ironic tone and the music matched its every turn. Two memorable and surprising Cyril Rootham songs to
Sassoon’s brilliant words were last on the program, another example of romantic images of peace at last and the joys of celebrating the end of conflict. But the final phrase tells us that perhaps there is yet another battle to be won and therefore, “The singing will never be done.”
2. Horrors
Some of the most memorable songs were in the horrors of what the soldiers experienced. Many composers seemed drawn to these powerful scenes and wrote music that had great empathy with the emotions and feelings. Twelve of the twentynine poems chosen for this concert spoke of that estrangement, loneliness, pain, sorrow, futility and horror of the situation. In fact two of the songs were entitled
“Pain” and “Futility.”
The songs of Wilfred Owen set by Elaine Hugh-Jones were the most haunting in their directness. These songs contain suggested dissonances with urgent chromaticism.
Dissonance and chromaticism are compositional devices of sound that creates an uncomfortable reaction. At the beginning of the song “The End,” we heard the rallying call of the bugle to rise up and fight once again. In the piano postlude of the same song, the faded bugle was heard once again and we saw the fields laden with the reflections of dead soldiers lying everywhere, their “round-mouth’s crimson deepen.”
Hugh-Jones’s musical language captured the atmosphere of every word and achieved the rare “perfect partnership” of word and note.
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Finzi’s setting of Thomas Hardy’s “Channel Firing” is a powerful setting of a long strophic poem whose message is fired by a quiet raging, then blustering until it wakes the dead.
One of the most poignant settings is the song “Pain” by Ian Venables. While listening to it, it seemed to pull from the very depth of gut feelings. His musical language and treatment of this powerful poem “created a harmonic and melodic soundworld which expresses the poem’s overall sense of confinement and despair. The work is heavily weighted in D minor, but highly chromatic and almost aggressive in that chromaticism.”
3. Reflections
The final category of the aftermath contains the highest number of poems. Perhaps the most beautiful variety of lyricism in musical styles lies in these nostalgic songs. There were 17 songs that seemed to fit into this category. One of the most beautiful songs by
Finzi, “Joy” speaks of a dead child and the sorrow of all lost before their time. The
John Ireland settings were dissonant and almost “redolent of Charles Ives—amazing and bizarrely memorable.” (Dr. Jane Manning) Again, Elaine Hugh-Jones’s settings of the three Edward Thomas songs showed a dark and mysteriously rich and thick piano part creating shadows of past and future in “The New House,” “House and
Man,” and “The Bridge.” Again her juxta-positioning of familiar elements in new surroundings creates harmonies that defy a traditional tonal analysis---yet do not leave home base entirely. The constantly present dissonances create a bleak atmosphere that emphasizes those frightening nightmarish moods in her music but then there comes a major chord at the very end or a single note to resolve all fear.
Another memorable song was the commissioned song by Alan Bullard “A Swan, A
Man.” The simplicity of the piano part (mostly built on major and minor triads) allows the almost chant-like vocal part to cast a spell of forgiveness and peace.
A favourite both for its interpretation and its purity was Britten’s “At Calvary Near the Ancre.” This excerpt from his
War Requiem tolls on with little accompaniment but a sheer purity of vocal silky line and repetitive dirge-like heart beats.
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I
NTERVIEWS WITH THE
L
IVING
C
OMPOSERS
It was a privilege to have two of the living composers present at the concert and to have interviews with three of them for some insight into their own views on composing. I am most grateful for their candid and introspective sharing on how they came to write these songs we heard this evening.
All three of the composers below answered the same general questions and on several points they were of a common mind. One of these was that they all respected greatly the words and their power over all else. They all believed the texts must be prominent and the music serve as a vehicle that would communicate the atmosphere of the poem.
Therefore, each poem dictates a different set of musical choices. That seemed to be the greatest challenge to song writing. They all confessed that it was a long labour to achieve those right sounds and the compatibility between words and music.
Elaine Hugh-Jones
Elaine Hugh-Jones’s contribution of seven songs set to two different poets with immensely diverse writing styles is not only a credit to her immense energy and creativity but to her generation (b. 1927) and her gender.
Elaine has always read a great deal of poetry but the texts that she sets to music seem to jump out at her--- and after this, “the music begins flowing immediately in her imagination.” At the piano, she can then recreate the poem’s atmosphere. It is possible that being a pianist the piano part may first come to her more naturally, then little by little the vocal line or melody floats above this part.
Elaine says that her musical choices are always based on the text and the particular character of each poem. Her compositional style changes to fit the mood of each poem’s particular atmosphere. Her ability to recreate this atmosphere in her songs is surprising in that she finds sounds and creates musical motifs that illuminate and colour the texts. She is especially skilful at writing graceful, yet chromatic melodic lines that are comfortable to sing. Her style is completely identifiable as her own but how she has assimilated her sounds has most likely been a long process. She was a
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collaborative pianist for over 37 years at the BBC, where she played many styles of music for singers and instrumentalists. She later studied orchestration (at the age of
75!) in order to arrange the songs for tenor and full orchestra.
Ian Venables
Ian has recounted how he came to choose the Ivor Gurney’s poem “Pain” and Robert
Graves’s “Flying Crooked.” He discovered Gurney’s poem when reading it in a collection. Ian has said how he immerses himself for a long time in a poem, including reading it aloud. He believes that “there is ‘hidden music’ in some poetry and that it is the job of the songwriter to try and bring this to the surface.’”
Two of Robert Graves’s poems, “Flying Crooked” and “The Snail” were sent to him by Lady Bliss, the widow of composer Sir Arthur Bliss. She told him to try setting some poems that were of a lighter vein. The composer took this as a hint that perhaps his music was perceived as being sometimes too serious! Ian decided that he would try the “Flying Crooked” which it proved to be a great challenge because a short poem must have condensed musical response. The result was a “light-hearted wayward melody juxtaposed against a more rigid musical structure . . . The musical emphasis given to the word, ‘hopelessness’ was set to emulate the dextrous flying abilities of the swift, erratic and haphazard flight patterns of the ‘cabbage white.’”
Alan Bullard
Alan said that even though he was commissioned to write a song to the poem “A
Swan, A Man,” he found an immediate connection to the poem. He recounts, “At the time that Edmund Blunden wrote these words he was towards the end of his life. It was then he was living in Long Melford, Suffolk, and the poem almost certainly refers to the pond there. Co-incidentally my (late) parents lived near Long Melford in the
1980’s and 90’s and so this poem made me think of them too, and of the fact that my father served overseas in the Army in WWII. Perhaps it was meant to be---but in any case I have often been attracted to poetry focussed on nature and this one—with a string attached –gave the opportunity for some drama and contrast within the setting.”
The composer describes the process much in the same way as Elaine. He was influenced by the great songs of Warlock, Gurney and Finzi, etc. Also the fact he is a
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pianist means he might start composing first at the piano. However, he believes that some of the accompaniments of these composers of the past were too complex and overwhelmed the melody at times. For this reason he tries to put the melodic line first without ignoring the importance of the piano. He believes in the partnership of the two.
Alan’s approach to this song was that of simplicity. He explains that when the idea came for the song at the piano he found himself playing only major and minor triads in alternation. He credits this idea as “borrowed” from Vaughn Williams’ 6 th
Symphony. The opening chords of B flat major—B flat minor—B minor seemed to trigger the vocal line. He explains that in this kind of triadic pattern he could avoid any dissonance or easily resolve them. The words are pictorial in this poem so he responded with trying to create such images in sound.
When thinking about what range to use for the vocal lines, the composer imagined a baritone because the poem suggested a narrative by a mature man and he felt the baritone voice would give that character.
John Jeffreys
I am grateful for valuable information from Ian Venables on this composer. It came from an article by Peter Palmer published in the Ivor Gurney Society Journal on the subject of Jeffrey’s songs and compositional style.
Born in the same year as Elaine Hugh-Jones (1927), John Jeffreys had a prolific song writing career in the 1950’s. He has set several songs to Gurney’s poetry, two of them featured on this program. “Horror follows horror” describes that category of poem wherein the soldier is living out the horrible fear of imminent death. The music starts from ambivalence and steadily progresses to strident and startling. The song is in declamatory style, tart and angry. The second song, “Omiecourt” is more reminiscent of a restrained and subtle texture as in the Elizabethan age composers’ style whose influence has been felt in this music. Palmer writes, “The song conjures up an atmospheric genre setting and leaves the sympathetic listener in no doubt as to the value of the small, dear things for which we fight.”
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T
HE
A
RTISTS
For this concert, the songs were equally divided between tenor, Nicolas Mulroy and baritone William Coleman. Pianist Anna Tilbrook’s role as collaborative partner to the two singers was accomplished with great sensitivity and energy (she played
31scores). Her attention to details in each song supported the singers and gave them the freedom to express comfortably what the texts and musical line demanded.
The two soloists have both sung in cathedral choirs and trained as choral scholars.
Their experience with a variety of musical styles showed them to both be sensitive and dedicated art-song interpreters.
Two versions of poems “In Flanders” and “In Flanders Fields” contrasted well being sung back to back, first by Coleman’s smooth baritone and then Mulroy’s lyrical tenor version of Ivor Gurney. The idea was to use two men’s voices: depicting the young and old, the hopeful and the defeated.
For me, the highlights of the interpretations by Nicholas Mulroy were the wrenching pathos of Ian Venable’s song “Pain” followed by the delightful “Flying Crooked” by the same composer. The moving interpretations of Butterworth’s “Six Songs From a
Schropshire Lad” proved that these songs deserve their place in the most beloved of
British Art Song repertoire. My tears flowed at the final song of this set : “Is My
Team Ploughing?” Elaine Hugh-Jones’s Wilfred Owen War Songs suited this tenor voice well and he gave meaning to the poignant texts with clear diction and strong conviction. The other moving moments from Mulroy’s performances were in the final group. Hearing Britten’s “At a Calvary Near the Ancre” out of context surprised some of us as it seemed almost out of this world when not in the context of the War
Requiem. It was however a perfect excerpt to include in this set. The final song,
“Everyone Sang” had the sweet irony of all victorious moments.
The baritone, William Coleman expressed his texts and music with dedication and sincerity. His comments to the audience on some of the songs were personable and helpful. The interpretation of the Edward Thomas poems by Elaine Hugh-Jones had
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great impact. Coleman delivered the realism and sardonic humour of Gurney’s recently edited “The Mugger’s Song” with skill and the audience appreciated his crackling delivery. This was a world première as well as the commissioned song, “A
Swan, A Man” by Alan Bullard. Coleman gave a beautiful interpretation of the new piece and he must be pleased to have been the first to sing so many new works on this evening’s concert.
Altogether, the combination of these forces - poetry, music, composers and interpreters went together to provide us all with a memorable and enjoyable concert
— a tribute to those who gave so much nearly a century ago.
Velma Guyer, 13 June 2009
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